It’s not banking 2.0 but it’s the closest we’ve got…

I’m somewhat dismissive of banks in general, having seen how slow they are to move with the times, how threatened they feel with offerings that challenge them, and how mired they are in the status quo generally. However this guest post by Kiwibank developer Jay Nielson restores some of my faith in banks.

It’s well worth reading in its entirety but some salient facts;

They rolled out an iPhone app in three weeks

They iterated it quickly post launch to respond to customer feedback

They have fun while doing it (including offering the site in Swedish chef language)

I’m totally impressed by what Kiwibank are doing – and only hope that their creativeness will continue – no matter how the political climate in New Zealand changes.

Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users.

Hi – I was the tester on this project and can confirm that we do support more than just the iPhone. This, along with the multi-lingual capability, was the main enhancement for the latest release and we now support Windows Mobile IE, Opera Mini and the Nokia Series 60 browser. Newer enhanced WAP phones should also work (we’ve had a look at it on a Sony Ericsson), though they’re not officially supported. cheers 🙂